Figurative
Language
“ Poetry provides the one
permissible way of saying one thing
and meaning another.”
Robert Frost
A figure or trope is a word or phrase
used in a way that significantly changes its
standard or literal meaning; figurative
language is the term used to describe all
nonliteral uses of language.
The Importance of
Figurative Language
(Schwiebert)
• Tropes stimulate thought. They prompt the writer
and the readers to think hard and imaginatively.
• Tropes create mental pictures that make abstract
ideas more concrete and memorable.
• A knowledge of figurative language gives you a
powerful tool for interpreting stories, poems,
essays, plays, and all other kinds of discourse,
spoken and written. Identifying and understanding
an important figure in a text can help clarify the
meaning of the whole work.
Figurative Language Types
SimileA trope in which one kind of thing is compared to markedly
different object, concept, or experience. The comparison is made
explicit by the word “like” or “as”.
• Books and movies are like apples and oranges. They both are
fruit, but taste completely different. (Stephen King)
• His lips as soft as rose petals
Softly dry my tear drenched face
Melting the cold spell I cast upon myself.
(Judi Anro Dizon, The One I Love)
• I want to be like water. I want to slip through fingers,
but hold up a ship. (Michelle Williams)
• Books like friends, should be few and well-chosen.
(Samuel Paterson)
• True love is like ghosts, which everybody talks about
and few have seen. (Francois, Duc de la Rochefoucauld)
A Stranger
Hands that wrap around my
There is a love I reminisce, wrists,
like a seed and arms
I’ve never sown. that feel like home.
Of lips that I am yet to kiss, I wonder how it is I miss,
and eyes these things
not met my own. I’ve never known.
Metaphor
An implicit comparison between dissimilar items; “like” or
“as” is not used.
There are two parts of a metaphor. The first one is the tenor, or the
original thing being compared. The second part is the vehicle, or
the thing with which the tenor is being compared.
• Books are mirrors: you only see in them what you already have
inside you. (Carlos Ruiz Zafon)
• Her eye of ice continued to dwell freezingly on mine.
(Charlotte Bronte)
• Architecture is frozen music. (Madame de Stael)
Pretext
Our love---a dead star
To the world it burns brightly---
But it died long ago.
Ode to Sorrow
Her eyes, a closed book, is the life she has led---
her heart, a locked door, her scratches on paper,
she writes melancholy the words they have bled.
like she’s lived it before.
She once loved in a way,
you could not understand,
he left her in pieces
and a pen in her hand.
The ode to her sorrow
Personification
In this kind of trope, an abstract concept, animal, or inanimate
object is treated as though it were alive or had human attributes.
• Death is my son-in-law, Death is my heir. (William Shakespeare)
• The memory is no friend,
It can only tell you
What you no longer have. (Margaret Atwood)
• Manta, aanhon ko man an libsog nga atay
hilaba nga kinabuhi ug an kawaray utang,
kun kanunay gin-uuhaw an dughan. (Firie Jill T. Ramos)
Unrequited
The sun above,
a stringless kite,
her tendril fingers
reach toward.
Her eyes, like flowers,
close at night
and the moon is sad,
to be ignored.
Apostrophe
The dead are addressed as if they were living, the absent as if they
were present.
• Why did you kill them both? Shakespeare, what were you thinking?
• O grim-looked night! O night with hue so black!
O night, which ever art when day is not
• For what were you before the birth of the daystar,
O my soul where were you in that deep and darkest night?
(Leonides Benesa, Fragments: The Deserts of God
• Hello darkness, my old friend. I’ve come to talk to you again.
Metonymy
The literal term for one thing is used to stand
for another with which it is closely associated.
• The pen is mightier than the sword.
(Edward Bulwer Lyton)
(pen- the written word)(sword-aggression/force)
• "Lend me your ears!“
(Shakespeare, Julius Caesar)
• The throne will not approve of you. (Throne- King)
Synecdoche
A part of something signifies the whole, or a
whole to represent the part.
• All hands on deck. (hands-workmen)
• He has six mouths to feed
• Respect is due for snowy hair
Life they lived is beyond compare
(snowy hair pertains to elder people)
- Anonymous
Remember:
• A synecdoche uses part for the whole or the
whole for a part.
• A metonymy is a substitution where a word or
phrase is used in place of another word or
phrase.
Hyperbole
A great exaggeration is used for effect. The effect of
hyperbole is often to imply the intensity of a speaker’s feeling
by putting them in uncompromising or absolute terms.
• It took you forever!
• My love is bigger than the universe expanded.
• I love you to the moon and back.
• I’ll die if I don’t pass this course.
When you rehearse your list of loves to me,
Oh, I can laugh and marvel, rapturous-eyed.
And you laugh back, nor can your ever see
The thousand little deaths my heart has died.
(Dorothy Parker)
Irony
Inconsistency in the statement; the opposite of
its actual meaning.
• A liar gives a public lecture on honesty.
• The “Titanic” was dubbed as the unsinkable ship.
It sank.
• Here’s some bad news for you: you all got a
perfect score.
Antithesis
It refers to a figure of speech in which words or phrases that
are parallel in order and syntax express opposite or contrasting
meanings.
It also refers to a disparity of words or ideas.
• “That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”
(Neil Armstrong)
• To err is human; to forgive divine.
(An Essay on Criticism, Alexander Pope)
• It is virtually a sea but dry like a heart
That has forgotten compassion.
(Lahar On My Mind, Mike Maniquez)
• There’s something disturbing about recalling a warm memory and
feeling utterly cold. (Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn)
A Poison Tree
I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.
Oxymoron
It is a compressed paradox that closely links two
seemingly contrary elements. Its aim is to suggest a subtle
truth.
• The ride was pretty ugly.
• The bitter sweet memory of childhood.
• That is old news!
• Don’t take the picture here because of dark lighting.
• I am a deeply superficial person.
Paradox
A statement that appears to be contradictory, but proves,
on further consideration, to make sense.
• To lead the people, walk behind them. (Lao Tzu)
• If the fool would persist on his folly he would become wise.
• The beginning of wisdom, as the wise man said, is to know
that you do not know.
• Less is more. (Bahaus School of art and architecture)
Allusion
A reference to some familiar facts, people, or events
in history and literature.
• The way she looked was like a young Imelda.
• She fell for him knowing that he is nothing less than a
Casanova.
• Sally had a smile like Mona Lisa.
• Don’t act like a Romeo in front of her.
• I am no Juliet for you.
Symbolism
A symbol refers to something that stands for
something else. In literary analysis something is said
to be symbolic if it evokes a large range of reference
beyond itself.
• Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both.
The Road Not Taken
(Robert Frost)
Litotes
This trope type is but an understatement. It can
be used when you are looking to underplay a
positive with a negative.
• The food at the restaurant is not bad at all.
• I am not as young as I used to be.
• She is not a beauty queen.
Dominatio
Room
n
Practice Test
The night held its breath, and
heaved a sigh of relief.
Practice Test
The eyes of the dog hardened
into brightly yellow jewels.
Practice Test
My soul has grown deep like
the rivers.
Practice Test
The road was a ribbon of
moonlight over the purple
moor.
Practice Test
There came a wind like a
bugle.
Practice Test
You awakened the blue
Mediterranean from his
summer dreams.
Practice Test
Man proposes; God disposes.
Practice Test
Twinkle, twinkle little star.
How I wonder what you are.
Up above the world so high,
Like a diamond in the sky.
Practice Test
Exact estimate
Practice Test
He was so intelligent, that he
failed the test.
Practice Test
Silver-colored cars moved
slowly down the road like
fishes in the deep ocean.
Practice Test
The youngest princess is the
apple of the King’s eyes.
Practice Test
The rock stubbornly refuses
to move an inch.
Practice Test
O Wind, if Winter comes, can
Spring be far behind?
Practice Test
The grieving widow cried a
bucket of tears.
Practice Test
Parting is such a sweet
sorrow.
Practice Test
Life succeeds in that it seems
to fail.
Practice Test
I sure love my enemies.
Practice Test
He is addicted to the bottle.
Practice Test
You will love the jumbo
shrimp in this restaurant.
Practice Test
The captain shouted, “I need
all hands on the deck.”
Practice Test
He spends the evening
reading Shakespeare.
Practice Test
His intelligence led the
company to bankruptcy.
Practice Test
It is better to reign in hell
than in heaven.
Practice Test
My love is bigger than the
universe.
END
